We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Andrea Holt-Roysdon. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Andrea below.

Andrea, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you talk to us about a risk you’ve taken – walk us through the story?

The two biggest risks I’ve ever taken both include relocating. First, I relocated back home to Okinawa, Japan from Arizona upon graduating college without a job or any idea what was going to happen. I took that big leap again when I relocated to San Antonio to close the distance gap in my long-distance relationship. I was fortunate enough, even back then, to have a remote job so I was able to move and keep employment. Who knew how it was going to end up, but I’m glad I took that leap instead of wondering “what if.” That person is now my husband and now we have a beautiful son and two well-fed dogs.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I grew up in Okinawa, Japan and started baking from a young age. If anybody has been to a Japanese bakery, they know there is just something special about walking in surrounded by the aroma of fresh baked dough, grabbing a tray and tongs, and trying to maintain self-control while adding breads and pastries one by one to their tray. The pillowy dough and assorted flavor combinations are intoxicating!

I missed this about being home… and at the time, I didn’t see many offerings in the way of Asian bakeries in San Antonio. The closest we had was in Austin. Even though I knew I couldn’t bring it large scale to San Antonio, I started Kijimuna in 2020 as a way to fulfill my longing for the baked goods from home as well as share my passion of baking with the community. It seemed so perfectly timed that I was just in the planning stages of starting my pop-up when a local bakery reached out to me about collaborating on a Stop Asian Hate fundraiser. I couldn’t have imagined a more meaningful debut.

I try to keep my menu at least half of items commonly found in Japanese bakeries, offering different flavors of melon pan, chocolate marble twists, and Okinawan sweet potato tarts. But I also like to flex my culinary muscle and get a little creative with items such as miso black sesame sweet rolls, yuzu matcha mochi donuts, ube sourdough cake with coconut frosting, or even a newer offering of my signature Kijimuna snack mix (a furifake Chex mix with a variety of candied Japanese citrus peels). Feeding people is my love language, and I’m happy to do it one pop-up at a time for the community of San Antonio.

Where do you think you get most of your clients from?

Word of mouth. The majority of my customers I have are because somebody told them about me. I don’t spend extra funds on marketing and I exclusively use Instagram for business communications and marketing. I have a website, but I really point it all back to Instagram since it’s so user friendly and communications are easily kept in one place. I also like how personal it can be. I like how I’ve been able to recognize returning customers and catch up with life goings-on with those who have become regulars. Since I am the sole operator for all functions of Kijimuna, and thus my production volume is limited, I like to keep my outreach very grass-roots.

How did you build your audience on social media?

The initial build of my humble following definitely came from the aforementioned fundraiser where I collaborated with another well-known business in the community. Her following and reach helped to lift me up. The other was my very first pop-up ever was for a market that had quite a few vendors. The market not only did well to announce who their participating vendors were, but when vendors shared those posts to their individual networks, it only increased all vendors’ reach.

Contact Info:

• Website: kijimuna.square.site
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/kijimunapopup

Image Credits
All photos are my own.